Fences
August Wilson (1985)
“A Black man who was great enough to have been legendary stands in his own backyard building a fence — and doesn't know whether he's keeping something out or something in.”
This page prints on a single page. Use Ctrl+P / Cmd+P.
Fences
August Wilson (1985) · 101pages · Contemporary / Pittsburgh Cycle · 9 AP appearances
Summary
Troy Maxson, a 53-year-old Black garbage collector in 1950s Pittsburgh, was once a gifted baseball player barred from the major leagues by segregation. He builds a fence in his backyard, fights with his son Cory over football, betrays his wife Rose with an affair that produces a child, and slowly alienates everyone who loves him. When Troy dies, those left behind must reckon with what he gave them, what he took, and what the fence was always for.
Why It Matters
Fences won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1987, making August Wilson one of only seven playwrights to win the Pulitzer for drama twice (he won again for The Piano Lesson in 1990). It is widely taught as one of the essential works of American drama and as the...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Black Pittsburgh vernacular rooted in the blues tradition — informal in surface texture, formally structured in rhythm and repetition
Narrator: Fences has no narrator — it is pure drama. But Wilson's stage directions function as a kind of narrative voice: spare...
Figurative Language: High
Historical Context
1950s Pittsburgh — post-war labor economy, early Civil Rights era, residential segregation, Negro Leagues in decline: Troy Maxson is a man for whom history arrived too late. The color line in baseball was broken in 1947, when Troy was 43 — past his prime. The Civil Rights Movement is gathering as the play is set, ...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- Troy argues that he prevented Cory from playing college football to protect him from the disappointment Troy himself experienced. Is this protection or sabotage? Can it be both?
- Bono says some people build fences to keep things out, and other people build fences to keep things in. By the end of the play, which is Troy's fence doing — and for whom?
- Rose says she buried herself inside Troy's life for eighteen years. But she clearly had agency — she made choices. Is Rose's speech a revelation of victimhood or a claim of authorship over her own sacrifice?
- Wilson gives Troy a completely developed account of why he became who he is — the sharecropper father, the prison years, the Negro Leagues, the color line. Does this explanation excuse Troy? Does Wilson want it to?
- Troy is wrong that Cory has no future in football — Cory could have gotten a scholarship. But Troy was right that the world denied him specifically. How does Wilson use generational difference to make both men right and both men wrong?
Notable Quotes
“Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner. And you know what I'll do to that! Lookee here, that's all death is to me. A fastball on ...”
“I got some people down there I got to see about a fence.”
“I done give you every chance in the world to be a man and you can't take advantage of none of it. You living the fast life... You just a wormy bast...”
Why Read This
Because Troy Maxson is one of the most fully human characters in American drama — he is wrong, he is right, he is loving, he is destroying, all at once. The play gives you the experience of holding two incompatible truths simultaneously: Troy is t...